That was snow too bad...

I'm sure there will be far worse snow puns in the next day or two. As a Scotsman, I can get away with as many s' no' puns as you like.
First of all, I'm rather pleased with myself that I deduced that the boy in the first teaser clip was indeed a young Dr. Simeon. My knowledge of mid-19th Century costume is obviously far greater than I thought. Maybe I'm in the wrong job?
First impressions? I will try to avoid specific plot points as readers in Australia and New Zealand won't have seen it yet.
A slow burner of an episode, the Doctor takes a while to engage with the threat - even though he knows there is a threat and who and where it is coming from. Most of the humour is at Strax's expense - though I do worry that we are witnessing Sontaran-ism. Would we have had the same jokes if it had been a human being of certain physical size / shape / colour?
The  Doctor knows who the villain of the piece is (he refers specifically to a 1967 adventure - and finally sorts out a certain dating conundrum), and yet at the end he seems unsure. It's as though he had forgotten who the entity is. If it was who we think it is - it doesn't tally at all with what we know about it.
The TARDIS staircase was a beautiful image.
I strongly suspected that there would be far more to Clara than a Victoria governess. The minute he gave her the key I just knew how things would pan out. The word that she uses to bring the Doctor out of his self-imposed exile - just a coincidence, or is there more to it than that?
Tom Ward was a bit underused - though I did love the bit where he's presented with the Doctor, Vastra, Strax invading his house, and killer Snowmen on his front lawn - and the only thing that fazes him is that Clara might have a boyfriend.
The titular monsters were disappointingly underemployed.
The solution to the menace is the thing that will prevent this ever getting 5 star reviews. I thought it was sentimental nonsense - something Moffat has been guilty of before.
As for the new opening titles - the jury is still out. Maybe a bit too busy?
And as for the "Coming Soon..."? Well, the new Cybermen are officially out there. Glimpses of a lizard-like alien and something akin to the Silence. Is Mark Gatiss' base-under-siege story set on a submarine? Looks like Celia Imrie is in the urban thriller story (the first of the second half of episodes). Was that Strax, or a more belligerent Sontaran?

Much better than last year's disappointing effort, certainly, but far from perfect. I will watch it again tomorrow, and give some further thoughts later.
Expect T-shirts with "I am a lizard woman from the dawn of time. And this is my wife." - and "Do you have a goldfish named Colin?".